Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Lodro Rinzler. Lodro Rinzler is an author and meditation teacher based in New York City. He is a student of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. He has taught meditation at locations as diverse as Google, Harvard, and the White House. Lodro founded a leadership training program called the Institute for Compassionate Leadership before cofounding and serving as the chief spiritual officer of New York City’s premier drop-in meditation studio, called MNDFL. Lodro is the author of six books, including the bestselling The Buddha Walks Into a Bar, Walk Like a Buddha, and The Buddha Walks Into the Office.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Lodro and I spoke about a core Shambhala teaching—creating enlightened society—and how we can approach that during the difficult times in which we live. We also talked about the Institute for Compassionate Leadership, what it means to be a mindful leader, and how Lodro works with young people who are seeking direction and the opportunity to be a benefit through their work. We talked about cultivating kindness on and off the cushion, and a teaching that’s important to Lodro called “The Four Exhilarations.” Lodro also shared with us how to understand a complex Shambhala teaching on “The Four Dignities,” embodying the qualities of the tiger, lion, garuda, and dragon. And he also shared with us his overarching mission in the world, which is to make meditation accessible to as many people as possible. Here’s my conversation with Lodro Rinzler.
Lodro, you’re a teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage, and right here at the beginning I would love it if you would introduce to our listeners this particular Buddhist lineage—the Shambhala Buddhist lineage. What the heck is it, and what makes it unique?
Lodro Rinzler: Yes, so I was actually born and raised in the Shambhala tradition. My parents started studying with the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche when they were in their twenties, and it was, you know—meditation was sort of always around in my household. So, it was actually sort of—almost like a culture as opposed to a place that my parents went on some days, for example, and did something. You know, it was just sort of around.
So, I started practicing early on. And not surprisingly, when I hit teenage years, I decided to rebel—which meant that I started exploring Zen.
TS: Wild.
LR: Right, I know. Very bold of me. I went to church, and I went to a synagogue. I started just exploring religion more broadly. After a number of years of doing that, I came back with sort of a renewed commitment to the Shambhala Buddhist tradition in particular—and I’ll say what this is in a minute. But, part of the reason that I was attracted back was the societal vision for this particular lineage.
So, Shambhala stems from Tibetan Buddhism, specifically out of these four major schools that are often considered within the Tibetan Buddhist world. There’s the Sakya school, which stems from the Gray Earth Sakya monastery. There’s the Gelugpa school, which people commonly know as the Dalai Lama as the head of that particular school. And then, there are the Kagyu and Nyingma schools.
So, this stems from the Kagyu and Nyingma schools of Tibetan Buddhism—Nyingma being the ancient lineage—one of perhaps the oldest lineage of Buddhism actually becoming Tibetan Buddhism, you could say—and the Kagyu lineage. And Trungpa Rinpoche was actually recognized at a young age as the head of the monastery in that Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, and studied with many Nyingma teachers in addition. So, it sort of carries both of those lineages.
And then the Shambhala teachings have a really interesting emphasis on being in the world. So there’s an old story—it’s probably a much longer answer than you wanted for your very first question. I apologize.
TS: Take your time.
LR: OK. But there’s an old story dating back to the time of the Buddha of a king named Dawa Zangpo. Dawa Zangpo heard tell of the Buddha in whatever way people did back then—I’m guessing YouTube—and went in search of him, and was disappointed when he realized that the Buddha only hung out with monastics. He only taught monks and nuns. And he said, “You know, I would love to be able to practice these teachings, but I can’t abandon my kingdom. I have a family, and a kingdom—all these people who are relying on me. I can’t just walk away from them.” And the Buddha is said to have sent his monastic followers out of the area, and imparted what was known as the Kalachakra tantra on Dawa Zangpo—a set of teachings that is really a beautiful set of teachings. The Dalai Lama actually teaches in parts these same empowerments regularly.
And he—Dawa Zangpo—took these teachings to heart, went back, started practicing mindfulness, compassion practices, doing all of this wonderful work that ultimately seeped into the rest of the kingdom. It’s sort of like for anyone who’s been meditating for a while, the question comes up like, “Oh, how do I start talking to my family and my friends about this?” And he sort of exhibited a sort of “show, don’t tell” mentality of, “Oh, I’m just going to embody the teachings.” And people got interested, and they slowly seeped out into the entire society.
And so this particular kingdom invited people from all backgrounds—all ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender identities, you name it. And this kingdom was known as Shambhala.
So, this is the namesake from which this lineage comes from—this sense of open inclusivity, society based on kindness. And it’s interesting because Tibetan Buddhist traditions are often thought of widely as monastic, and this is very much a householder lineage. It does have monastic components. People do practice at our one abbey in Nova Scotia. But more often than not, it’s actually people going about their day-to-day lives and embodying, and studying, and practicing these teachings.
So, I don’t know if that answers all of your question, but this is sort of where it came from and also why I got inspired by it. That sort of “be in society, be in the world” aspect.
TS: Yes. It’s interesting that you would highlight that right in the beginning. I know you’ve done some talks and emphasized this teaching on creating enlightened society—and that’s a possibility for us as human beings, even in this time. And I’m inspired by that. Here you are as a young person holding the torch, if you will, for creating enlightened society during a time that many people consider to be a very, very, very dark time in our world. And I wonder how you can help people cross the bridge, if you will, from the pain of our time—the pain of racism, terrorism, environmental destruction, et cetera—and a vision that seems unattainable: creating a society based on kindness.
LR: Yes. No easy feat.
TS: It’s a bridge. It’s a bridge just to help us, yes.
LR: [Laughs.] A lot of times when we think about society, it can feel very overwhelming. It can feel like you open up Facebook and you’re bombarded by the news. And of course I would never tell anyone to divorce themselves from the paining reality of our existence here, because we should be well informed about what’s going on in our communities. But, it does feel like it’s easy to get bombarded and overwhelmed these days between—as you noted—the rampant racism that seems to exist in our back yards, and the environmental destruction of our country, and the extremely broken political system. This is not even me playing partisan politics; I actually just think our system is not very well organized.
So, we have a time where this feeling of overwhelm is getting pervasive. And I’ve definitely seen this, by the way, in people that are coming to MNDFL—the drop-in meditation studios that I run. They’re just feeling completely overwhelmed by society. Like, “That’s just this monster out there.”
But one thing that I found very helpful that my teacher told me—my teacher Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. He said, “Society can be two people sitting down and having tea.” Which puts it really in perspective for me.
So, for example, you and I are sitting here and we’re having a conversation for this period of time, and that is one type of society that we’re creating. We could create it from the point of view of actually being present with each other, and open hearted, and talking about things that are meaningful. Or, we could sit here and we could both be on our respective laptops, googling things, and trash-talking celebrities to one another, and all these sorts of things that are also things that people do.
So, within that, we would then have this period of time. We would then go into our other societies. We would go into your work society. I would go into teaching a class, and that would be my society. And then we would carry that energy forward, and you would treat your colleagues a certain way, I would treat the students in a certain way, and that’s a ripple effect. It really is.
So, if we think of society in this way, then we’re constantly taking part in it. It’s not something out there, but there’s just a million of them. It actually is quite refreshing. So, I could, for example, view my romantic relationship as a society. I view MNDFL—these meditation studios—as definitely its own weird little society. My group of friends, when we get together, that’s a society. When I go on a long retreat with a group of people, that’s a society that lasts a week, or however long the retreat may be.
So, we’re constantly in society, and the question becomes: how do we show up for it in a way that is meaningful for us? So, I think the more that we actually practice, the more we actually start to get to know ourselves—ultimately befriend ourselves, maybe even love ourselves—the more we’re actually connecting authentically with those around us and having a ripple effect on society in the same way that Robert Kennedy in his famous speech talked about throwing a stone in a pool of water—that we don’t always know where the ripples are going to go. We can’t always see them.
The same thing, I think, in terms of our society. We may get easily overwhelmed—or if we just show up for the cashier at the local deli, or the person who is across the way from us on our subway commute and just sort of smile for a moment to make a connection. We’re actually creating society in a different way than what we might habitually do.
So, I really think we’re constantly creating society. That means that we constantly have an opportunity to create a society that is a little bit more enlightened than what we are actually seeing and being bombarded with.
TS: Well, I love the way you’re breaking it down. It also makes it impossible to go out there in the world at large being an activist without taking care of your immediate society of your relationship, your family, the people you’re working with. So, I love that. You can’t do that kind of end-around where you’re working on some goal and trespassing people in the process.
LR: Right.
TS: The question I have for you though is: at whatever level, whether it’s two people or a hundred people—that’s the society we find ourselves in in a moment—what would you say are the most important principles or orienting ideas for this enlightened society that we can create?
LR: Yes. I mean, similarly—so, within Shambhala there’s the new year celebration called Shambhala Day. And everyone sort of gets together at their local Shambhala center, and they play a broadcast. And the community sort of gets to celebrate, even if virtually these days because we’re all so connected. It’s a beautiful thing. Back in the day, it used to be a phone call that we would all get on and you would hear a roll call of all of these different people gathered around the world.
And then every year, my teacher Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche gives a talk. And I thought, “This guy’s giving the same talk over and over again every year.” When he gets the community together, all he says is, “You know, we really need to be kind to each other.” And I realized that at a certain point because no one was listening. Not that Shambhala are particularly unkind people; they are very kind.
But it’s like the emphasis that it sort of has to be at the heart of our interactions. It’s not something like, “Oh, we should just be nice? Give me the real teachings.” The real teachings are we need to be kind. The real teachings are that we actually need to show up for others in a way that they feel seen, heard, supported. And that’s a deep kindness—a show of love for these individuals. I really do believe that’s how we do it. So, no act is too small.
As I mentioned before, like sitting down across from someone on a subway. You could do what most people do and sort of ignore, which is fine. You could be mean, which is not good. Or, you could actually go out of—sort of go beyond your comfort level and smile at another human being, and that might actually perk them up.
The number of people that connect on long flights. It’s actually reaching across literally the aisle and saying, “Hey. Where are you flying to?” and then becoming friends. It’s just remarkable to me. I think we have a deep well in that ability for kindness that is not often explored or talked about.
So, I really do believe that the enlightened society—this bridge that you’re talking about—the roads to it are paved with just people showing up for one another in a way that is kind.
TS: I love it. Thank you. Now, Lodro, I know you wrote a book called The Buddha Walks Into the Office: A Guide to Livelihood for a New Generation. And we’re talking about this idea of how we can transform the workplace and bring more kindness into the workplace. And I want to address this idea of enlightened society at work, if you will—and especially speaking to young people who are looking at their options for employment. Is it really possible for me to do heart-centered work—meaningful work—and make good money at the same time? And I’m curious [about] your views on this.
LR: Yes. I mean, it’s funny. I hadn’t heard this term until recently, but a friend told me that he is of the “slash generation,” which means—I think that it’s particularly prevalent where I am in New York—that many people are a DJ slash yoga instructor slash copywriter by day. They’re two, three things at once, and somehow rent gets paid and they live. And I don’t think that’s uncommon these days. I think there’s just, first of all, a bazillion new options for people that did not exist. Not that I am particularly old but I really do think when I was growing up there was still the idea [of], “Oh, you know, a good profession would be a doctor or a lawyer and, you know, maybe there’s 10 other professions that you might want to consider.”
And now it’s like, “I don’t know. I feel like every day there’s some sort of new tech industry that’s starting up, and someone has a new creative title and they’re doing . . .” I mean, I’m the chief spiritual officer for MNDFL. That is my official title because we had to give me a title instead of cofounder, and I didn’t want to be CEO. I wanted my business partner to be CEO. And we said, “Fine. I’m in charge of the spiritual side, I will be the chief spiritual officer—that my job is to oversee the integrity of our space.” It is a completely made-up title. We made this up.
So, there’s no way I could have predicted, growing up, that I would be able to hold a title like this. So, I think there is a bazillion options, and at the same time it’s very intimidating for people. And the economy is not such that everyone who tries gets an amazing success out of it.
So, I don’t want to sort of be Pollyanna-ish about people’s careers, but I do think that there is something—and again, I feel like I’m quoting Sakyong Mipham a lot lately, but there’s something that he said a number of years ago that really stuck with me, which is, “What makes for right livelihood is not our vocation, but our view.” Meaning that we actually could do any number of things, but if we actually are doing it with a view of cultivating the qualities that we would actually like to cultivate over the course of a lifetime, then it will be meaningful to us. Then it will be right livelihood.
Let me put it in an example from that book, where I remember I was at a university shortly after my first book came out and I was on tour. And very briefly, one person I met was about to graduate and she had a very specific idea of what she wanted to do. She wanted to be the chief marketing officer of Starbucks. Which, I mean, I was shocked. When I graduated from college I was like, “I don’t know what I wanted to do.” This was very hyper-specific.
So, I asked her some questions, I thought it was really interesting, and then met someone later on—same thing. About to graduate. I’m always very careful when I ask people about what they want to do, and so I say something like, “Oh, you know, have you thought about where you’re going live in a few months when you graduate from school?” And this person—they always jump right into the thing that they’re going to do, because they’ve been asked this question a million times, “What are you going do when you graduate?”
So, this woman said, “You know, I don’t know where I’m going to live. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I know I want to help people. Is that OK?” And I said, “Of course that’s OK.” And the more I thought about it, I thought that it’s better than OK, because there’s so many opportunities in this world to help people. If her motivation in doing work is to be a benefit to others, she could go into nonprofits, she could go into—she could become a lawyer and fight for the little guys. She could go work within a major corporation, but actually specifically focus on their environmental impact and reducing it.
There’s lots of opportunities to be of benefit if that’s what you want to do with your work. There’s only one opportunity to be the chief marketing officer of Starbucks. You’re either that person, or you’re not that person. If you spend decades trying to be that person and you’re not, you’re going to be disappointed. If you spend decades trying to be that person and you do become that person, there’s still probably a high likelihood that you’re going to end up disappointed because maybe you realize you don’t want to be chief marketing officer. Maybe you want to be chief operating officer. Maybe you feel like you neglected things along the way in terms of your family. Maybe you thought it would pay more. Maybe you thought it would be less work.
There’s lots of opportunities to sort of be disappointed if you’re hanging your hat on something so hyper-specific. But, I really do believe that if someone comes with the view of, “I want to be helpful,” or, “I want to be known as a loving person. I want to be known as a generous person,” there are many career paths that we can find that actually meet those qualities. It’s just different than thinking about it how we often think about it, which is, “I want to make this salary cap, or live in this city,” or something like that—actually basing our livelihood choices around something a little bit more intuitive but often ignored, which is who we want to be, not just what we want to do.
TS: What’s the view that you have towards your work in the world?
LR: Thank you for that question. It’s a really lovely one. I think a lot about it, because my friend Dev has a new book out called 50 Ways to Get a Job, and it’s the most nonlinear book in a good way, in that you can sort of skim through and you say, “Oh, this is the helpful exercise I need,” because it’s based around, like, “How are you feeling right now?” “I’m totally freaked out.” “Great, here’s an exercise to calm you down.” It’s actually very practical in that way.
But he and I have had a lot of conversations around this idea of a nonlinear path, and there are times when I—with my career—I’ve sort of bounced around. But the through-line seems to be trying to make meditation as accessible as possible for people. That seems to be what my work revolves around, and it used to be working within Shambhala centers. It then was as an author, and as a teacher (and it continues to be) and now it’s at MNDFL. We get very creative around how far we can go with making meditation as accessible as possible, including our MNDFL video channel that people can tune into. There’s lots of different things.
So, my intention is to share the benefits of meditation because I know it’s been so beautifully helpful for me and so many other people I care about. So, to be able to do that in a meaningful way, the outer manifestation continues to change. I don’t know if I will forever do MNDFL or if I will do something else down the road. I certainly couldn’t have predicted what I would be doing now five years ago, ten years ago. But, I do believe that that intention is going to probably stay with me a long time—the intention of trying to be of benefit and specifically through offering meditation.
TS: How would you help a young person discover inside themselves what their true inner sense of view, or purpose, or inspiration is, and really get clear on that?
LR: Yes. I mean, it is interesting because I feel like there’s—along the lines of this nonlinear career path, I feel like the thing that triggers something for someone is always different. I’ve asked a million people about, “How do you know you wanted to do that thing that you’re now doing? When was that moment?” And every time it’s a different story. I do, just because of the circles I run in and the people I ask, there are a lot of people who say, “It’s funny, it’s actually right when I started meditating that I realized X, Y, and Z.”
It’s almost like they’re creating some sort of mental space so that their wisdom can actually sort of poke its head out and say, “Hey, I’ve been trying to get through all this time. Thanks for finally creating some space to listen to me.” So, I do think that there’s—to kick the dead horse, there’s a million reasons that someone should meditate. These days, every week I feel like there’s a new research study coming out saying if you meditate a little bit every day, you see increased gray matter in the hippocampus. You see more activity in the ACC. You start to see all these benefits that, for non-neuroscientists like me, apparently mean you’re less held by stress, it boosts your immune system, it normalizes your sleep, it makes you more productive and efficient. It’s wonderful.
But, I honestly think you just get to know yourself better. I feel like no matter what, you’re actually getting familiar with all of who you are, and that’s actually going to lead to some aspects of discernment. When it comes to career, to actually answer your question, that means that you’re going to actually start to notice things that you want to cultivate more of in your life, and some things that you really wish you could cut out.
And some of those things we have power over, some we don’t, but it sort of helps to inform us for our career decisions. “Can I actually . . . ? Wow, I noticed that I really enjoy X, Y, and Z. You know, it keeps coming up and I feel delighted. Every time I’m meditating, this sort of thing comes to mind I feel delighted. This other thing comes to mind, I feel totally repulsed by it.” And we just get to know ourselves to the extent that we start to get a hunch that maybe I want to pursue X, Y, and Z, and maybe I really don’t want to do that other thing.
TS: Lodro, was there a moment in your life where the light went on and you were like, “I’m going make meditation as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. That’s it. That’s it.”
LR: I feel like it was just gradual for me. I never professed to be the role model for someone who’s looking to find meaningful work, because I feel like I kept stumbling backwards into it. I didn’t set out to teach meditation; it was a number of my mentors [who] pushed me into it. I didn’t set out to write all of these books. I started a blog, and it sort of spiraled out of control into an idea for a book, and someone actually did agree to publish it. I didn’t even necessarily decide that I wanted to do MNDFL; it was my business partner who approached me and said, “Why isn’t there something like this?” And I agreed that it was a beautiful idea.
So, it’s not like I had that moment where the light went off myself. But I love hearing other people’s stories, because it feels like—I don’t necessarily think I’m alone in that. I think it’s like a gradual sort of unearthing of one’s purpose. In my own experience, it was not a light bulb.
And I’ve talked to a number of people. I appreciate, for anyone who has that. But more often than not hear the, “I started to discover more and more about myself and it led me down the road of understanding that what I ought to be doing is blah.”
TS: OK. Now I want to see if we can connect two things here, which is your personal inspiration, overarching mission, if you will, to make meditation as accessible to as many people as possible, and this idea of creating an enlightened society based on kindness. And here’s my question: There are some people who, even before they start meditating, are really kind. And then they start meditating, and they continue to be kind.
But, you know, I’ve also met a lot of people who have meditated for a long time who kind of seem to keep to themselves. They’re certainly not talking to anybody on the airplane, and I wouldn’t say that I would use the word “kind” to describe them as one of the first words out of my mouth. I might say something else. So, I’m wondering: do you think meditation leads to interpersonal kindness all the time?
LR: [Laughs.] That’s a great question. No, I don’t necessarily. But I do think—I have a theory. Let me put it this way: I have a theory that every—people have placed heavy emphasis on the “being present” part of meditation. OK: if I’m meditating on the breath, for example, I acknowledge when I’ve drifted off and I just keep coming back to the present. Very little is then written about and emphasized in that moment—all of those moments—when you drift off and the tone we take with ourselves—the ways that we actually either beat ourselves up when we drift off in meditation, or the ways that we actually perpetuate kindness in that moment.
So, I really do believe that if we could actually learn, when we drift off, to actually just acknowledge it, give ourselves an effing break—just to relax, just to say, “Hey. I have between 60 and 80 thousand thoughts a day, apparently. Of course that’s going to happen right now, when I’m trying to meditate. Not a big deal.” If we started to treat ourselves with that level of kindness, I think it gets reified in our being. I really do. So, starting to treat ourselves with more respect, essentially—with more appreciation—then ultimately leads to a deeper well from which we can draw from in terms of offering kindness to others.
And I’ve seen it happen over and over again, where people have—e had someone who came into MNDFL the other day with an old friend who was going to try meditation for the first time. And I’ve known this guy since we opened our doors, and I was joking around. I said, “What are you doing hanging out with this jerk?” And she said, “Oh, you know, it’s funny you mention that, because he was a jerk. We’ve known each other for years. Every Tuesday we have lunch and, you know, it’s not like he’s horrible. But, you know, he’s not really attentive. He’s not really kind to me, and just recently he started really listening to me and texting me later in the week to follow up on things that I had asked about, and just making sure I was doing OK. And what’s going on with you?” And he goes, “I don’t know.” And he goes, “Oh, maybe it’s because I’ve been meditating.” And now she wants to try it.
So, I think sometimes it’s almost like we need to have it mirrored back to us that, yes, actually you are—you’re seeing some of these present [inaudible]. You’re being kinder to yourself, and you’re now starting to be kinder to others as a result of that.
So, I do think that it’s not going to have the same effect on everyone, but I do know a lot of people who have reaped that benefit.
And I’m with you. I’m not saying that anyone’s doing meditation wrong. I think that they probably are emphasizing practices that are not specifically—they’re not considering the kindness element of it while they practice.
TS: Now, you’re emphasizing when one’s meditating on the cushion itself, how we can start to be more kind to ourselves when we wander, or fall asleep, or whatever happens. Start drooling, whatever might happen.
Are there other ways? Are there other ways that you’ve found, not on the cushion, to be kind to yourself that you think are important and then have translated into this kindness that’s at the basis of enlightened society?
LR: Yes. I mean, there’s this set of teachings known as the Four Exhilarations, which I think—when I first discovered them, [they] really changed my life. And it said that if you do these four basic things over the course of a day, you actually start to feel boundless energy.
TS: Tell me what they are!
LR: And these things are—yes, right, I know. The secret list. It’s eat well, sleep well, meditate, and exercise. Which is, again, the simplest list in the world. Yet often, more often than not, many of us shortchange at least one of those in the course of the day. We sleep in and we feel rested, but then we have no time for breakfast. We skip meditation so that we can actually go to the gym. You know, whatever it is, we—it’s hard to get all four in in a day.
So for me, personally, I’ve found that if I can actually take care of myself—even with that most basic simple list—if I do those four things in one day, then I actually am treating myself with a lot of kindness and respect. And I also noticed that I do have more energy to connect with others. It seems so silly that it’s—this is the old thing of, “Even a three-year-old knows this, but an 80-year-old finds it hard to do. But it’s a real day-to-day challenge for me. With everything going on in terms of work, and writing, et cetera, to actually be able to do all four has really changed my ability to be kind to myself. And if I can emphasize that, then I know that I’m actually doing a good job for that.
TS: So, Lodro, part of the reason I really wanted to have you as a guest here on Insights at the Edge is that I’m very interested in what will help create a new generation of leaders—compassionate leaders, mindful leaders, heart-based leaders—in our world, so that we’ll have a world in the future. And I know that you are the founder of the Institute for Compassionate Leadership, and I want to talk some about that. When you work with young people—people in their twenties and thirties—what are the skills, if you will—the qualities that you’re wanting to help train and instill in a new generation of potential leaders for our world?
LR: A great question. So, the Institute for Compassionate Leadership was founded with sort of three pillars, one could say—the first of which being meditation training, the second being community organizing training, and the third being sort of just practical leadership skills that are not often taught in colleges these days. Over the course of a six month part-time training, what we’ve done is help people through a process where they really do come in with some sense of, like, “Oh, I want to do X, Y, and Z to help the world,” and they slowly start shifting, changing, and coming at it from that point of view that we were discussing before of not just, “What do I want to do?” but, “Who do I want to be? How do I want to live my life so that it’s a life marked by these qualities I want to cultivate in the world and in myself?”
And they come out the other end, more often than not, with a renewed sense of purpose or a new purpose altogether. And they seem to embody—so, I’m answering it sort of in a backwards way. It’s not, “What do I want?” But what I’ve seen after six months of meditation training, community organizing training, and just sort of practical leadership skills is that they have further clarity in what they want to do for their confidence—so, they have everything intrinsic to them within them—that they could actually do those things. And just again there’s something like real deep care—that they really want to care for others.
And for me this idea of a compassionate leader—it’s not like a leader has to be the boss, or that person in the family that everyone relies on. A leader could be anyone. It’s someone who actually steps up in a given moment and is of service to others.
And then [the] compassion aspect here isn’t that these people graduate and they think, “Ah, no, I’m better than everyone. I’m spiritually up here, and everyone’s down there, and I’m going to look down and pity them and take care of them.” It’s actually an empathetic point of view. It’s not sympathy; it’s empathy. Empathy here being, “I understand that you are struggling. I am have, through the force of my own meditation practice, become intimately as aware of how much I suffer and how I suffer. And because we suffer in similar ways, albeit with different storylines, my heart can go out to you.”
So, for me, it has these—this idea of compassionate leadership has these aspects of being of service to them, coming at it from the point of empathy and understanding. And as the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh once said, “Understanding is the other name for love. If we can’t understand, we can’t love.” So, I really do think that they’re intimately related.
TS: What are the practical leadership skills that people are trained in through the Institute for Compassionate Leadership?
LR: Yes, it’s a wide variety. There’s things around fundraising, there’s things around interviews. How to do interviews, how to network from an authentic point of view, sort of how to represent yourself from—not how to market yourself, but how to actually present who you are and what you care about in ways that are meaningful. So, sort of like looking at some of these—I would almost say MBA-level skills, but really ninja-ing it from a mindfulness point of view.
TS: Now, one of the teachings that seems important to you from your writing—you call it “embodying the tiger.” And I wonder: is there some way that embodying the tiger is kind of a secret code language underneath some of the leadership skills you’re talking about? Or, tell me more about embodying the tiger. How do we do that, and why is that important?
LR: Sure. So, you know, this really came out of The Buddha Walks into a Bar, which—sort of the span of it goes through what are known as the Four Dignities of Shambhala; the tiger, the lion, the garuda, and the dragon. With the tiger in particular, it’s known for a handful of qualities, including the ability to just by present—to actually have the sense of precision. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche called it “now-ness,” the essence of just being now. So, if you’ve ever seen a tiger, the tiger is not worried about when its taxes are due or whether someone can hack his email. The tiger is just there.
The other qualities being discernment; we talked about this a little bit earlier, but this look-before-leap quality of actually getting to know ourselves better. But in this case, the tiger being—really surveying the jungle, understanding everything that’s going on, and then leaping when appropriate and striking. And the third being gentleness. I mean, I know that tigers have this incredible ability to be vicious with the claws that can rip through most anything. But if you’ve ever seen a mother tiger with her cub, she’s incredibly gentle. So incredibly gentle and playful. So, this aspect of gentleness is—even in the tiger, it’s important.
And I would say that sort of, when we talk about the Buddhist notion of renunciation, I always think about this analogy because it’s not that the tiger can’t create harm. It’s not that the tiger can’t pop open her claws and shred into this child. It’s the fact that there’s real strength in renouncing that—sort of holding back on that strength. The strength within—holding back on that destructive impulse. In the same way, this aspect of renunciation where you could very well learn about ourselves to the extent that we are not acting out on every negative impulse that we have. We could actually start to refrain from it—that there’s real strength in that.
Anyways, those are just a handful of these qualities of the tiger. But yes, I think there is something to embodying this sense of gentleness, and discernment, and precision, and now-ness that we could actually get out of a meditation practice that’s incredibly practical in how we show up for others and how we want to show up for our work.
TS: Now I presume, with the Four Dignities, that we’re invited to embody all four—the tiger, the lion, the garuda, and the dragon—as appropriate. So, why don’t you go ahead and just lay it out for us? Because we heard the Four Exhilarations, and that was intuitively obvious, as you said, but hard to do. But I don’t think, necessarily, the Four Dignities are intuitively obvious to people.
LR: They are not. Yes, so [inaudible] Shambhala. This is something that—if someone wanted to go to a Shambhala center, for example—there’s a whole series of classes known as “The Way of Shambhala,” which cover each of these in a series of work. So four, five weeks on the tiger, on the lion, et cetera, et cetera. And it’s a beautiful curriculum.
But, very briefly, the tiger: it’s often associated with some of the foundational teachings within Buddhism. But it’s really this aspect of getting to know ourselves, which I keep referring to—to the extent that we are being more thoughtful about our life, not creating so much harm to others.
And then, the lion: The snow lion is this being that is said to be incredibly perky, incredibly youthful, joyful, exuberant, and embodies a lot of the qualities of connecting with others—actually offering our heart to others, being there for them. So, we sort of take the leap from me working with me to me working with us.
The garuda actually is often associated with some of the more absolute teachings of Buddhism. Sometimes known as the teachings around emptiness or egoless-ness. The garuda is a being that is half bird, half man, said to be born in the air, and never touches the ground. [It] has literally the bird’s-eye view as a result. So, there’s a sense of equanimity there—that the garuda has mastered its open hearted-ness to the extent that every—he could equanimous with his heart to the extent that everyone is included.
It’s also said that the garuda shrieks the truth of reality as it flies across the sky, the truth being very obvious things that we don’t like to talk about like impermanence and change and death. So, there’s an aspect of fearlessness—here not being without fear, but being willing to look at some of the things that we fear and lean into them.
And then the dragon is the fourth. The dragon is often associated with kind of the more esoteric teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, but it has this element of—I forget who said it. Maybe Padmasambhava saying, “The fire with fire, the water with water.” Not sure if that was Padmasambhava, but the idea being that the dragon is the master warrior, the being that is able to just show up on the spot and act skillfully because they’re entirely there. There’s an aspect here of taking the—whatever obstacles come up as part of our path. That whatever we show up to, that’s our spiritual journey of the moment, and that we—the master warrior is able to play with it in that way. There’s an aspect of playfulness, and show up appropriately.
TS: Lodro, I think of you as a sort of next generation Shambhala torch-carrier, if you will. And first of all, I’m just curious, how does it sound when I say that? How does that feel when I say that?
LR: Well, I, you know: I’ll tell you honestly, Tami.
TS: Yes.
LR: I was at a concert this weekend, and there was a young person with a topknot, a man bun, and he approached me and my fiancée and said, “You know, I just want—” He was being very earnest and sincere. He said, “I just want to honestly say, I think it’s so cool how people your age are still coming to these things.” [Laughs.]
TS: OK. But what? You’re in your, you know, you’re 34, 35. You’re in your early, mid-thirties.
LR: Yes, I’m 34.
TS: To me, that’s quite young. To me.
LR: I know.
TS: OK.
LR: So, I know. I love, how does it feel to me? It feels good to be called young, yes. That’s how it feels. And of course, as you just pointed out, it is all relative.
But, yes, I do think there is there—you know, when you say that today, I feel glad to hear that I’m young. I also normally hear these things [and] I say, “Yet and there’s only so many of us, which is really surprising.” Because when I think of Buddhism in the ‘60s, ‘70s, I often think of lots of young people, and many of them as teachers and sort of leaders within those communities. And we have wonderful, now more senior people—people who have been meditating for 30, 40 years. But we don’t have as many of those sort of young teachers around.
So, at MNDFL, we’ve really taken to cultivating a diverse group of faculty in many ways, but that includes age diversity. And some of them are newer, some of them are very senior teachers. It’s been really sort of a delight to see the community of that spread out, because I do think that there’s so many wonderful emerging young teachers.
And the other thing—that when you say that is with the books and everything, I have continued to be shocked that the club of young-ish authors in the Buddhist world has been mainly populated by white men, myself included. And I’m actually really delighted that I am starting to see that change more. Three MNDFL teachers have books coming out in the not too distant future—my fiancée included, Adreanna Limbach. Thank you, Tami, for taking her under the Sounds True umbrella. I’m glad that you guys are working together. It feels like a really lovely fit to have—
TS: Yes.
LR:—a woman in her thirties who’s doing a book on self-acceptance and self-love in a time that this message is desperately needed. And it just feels—to be honest, between you, me, and however many people listen, she is the better teacher of the two of us. So, I’m really excited that she’s actually doing this.
TS: Sounds like a man in love.
LR: Yes. But, you know, Kate Johnson is coming out with a book, Yael Shy has a book specifically aimed towards college-aged students. And these are all women, and I think that it’s good. I’m really glad to see that we’re actually starting to see more young-ish people stepping up, doing books, becoming teachers, and I hope that’ll continue to grow.
TS: OK. So one of my questions about this young-ish presentation, if you will, in this case of the Shambhala teachings: is what do you think have been the most important translations that you’ve had to do? And I don’t know if “translations” is quite the right word, but updates, relevancy, language in order to make the Shambhala lineage really alive and accessible. Where have you really had to apply your creativity so that young-ish people care?
LR: It’s an interesting question. I think, starting off with The Buddha Walks Into a Bar, the first book that I did, we had this idea that it was targeted towards young people. And I get an email every week from someone saying, “Hey, I know I’m not the target demographic here, but I love the book and here’s what I have to say about it.” And these are people in their fifties and older.
So, it’s sort of cool that it may not just be—the work I do may not just be just for young people, which is good. But there is something about making the teachings relevant. I think the thing that I’ve always been curious about was this term “meditation practice.” So, it implies that we’re practicing for something, and in my mind we’re practicing for all of these other aspects of our life.
So, if I am practicing being present, does that mean I could be present with my partner? Does that mean that I could be present when I’m out with friends at a bar? Does that mean that I can actually start to apply this in practice for all of these nitty-gritty parts of my day?
I mean, translation isn’t a bad word for it. I think it’s sort of just making it—maybe mapping it onto situations that we’re struggling with in the same way that you asked about this bridge that we’re trying to build towards enlightened society given how many people’s minds are on a really sort of dire—seemingly dire—political situation. It’s like that’s something that we should all be talking about. How could we bring our practice to these things?
So, for me, it’s been not so much translation—or, not so much like a dumbing-down, but a mapping out. How do we actually put this on to our career search, as we talked about before? Showing up for other people at the office, showing up for our difficult family members?
So, I think that’s where a lot of my work comes to. Within the first book, [I] had a section on sort of meeting people romantically. And, you know, people are like, “What are you doing?” And yet, people seem to also really connect with that and say, “Oh, thank God. I was actually hoping that someone would ever talk about this, because I feel like it’s weird that we have all this internet dating and things like that, and no one ever talks about how to show up and be authentic on a first date.”
So, I honestly am interested in: how does this become relevant and map onto all of these nitty-gritty parts of our life? I don’t know; I think the Shambhala teachings lend themselves to that, thankfully. As do many others. But—
TS: OK, so what is the brief Shambhala teaching on internet dating?
LR: Ha! Oh, God. Well, I mean, even today there’s so many different types of that, right? Like there’s dating websites, there’s Tinder, there’s all sorts of things. And of course, I’ve been out of the game, so to speak.
TS: I’m an old married lesbian. I don’t know anything about it. I’m just looking for the basics for our listeners here.
LR: For the basics, yes. The 101. Similarly, I have not been single for a little bit of time here.
But, my advice has been that one could enter into these things with an open mind, and not necessarily keep a list of qualifications on their desk. In fact, there’s a great story of a woman I know who had this list. She said, “I’m in my 30s. I know what I want.” She sat down and she wrote on a legal pad two long pages of, “Must have blah. Must like big dogs. Must like camping. Must be this tall.”
And she wrote them up, and then she went online and did this—eHarmony, I think—and just started looking and sort of clicking these boxes. Whenever someone would make a match, she would actually—whenever someone would match all of here qualifications, she would match with them and then try and go on a date with them, and she found that they were all [meeting] the qualifications, but there was no je ne sais quoi. And she ended up putting the list, folding it up, putting it away, and then meeting someone who, in her words, flew in face of all of those things, and I’m happy to say that five years later they’re now married.
But it’s one of those things where I think with the internet it particularly lends itself to us being je ne sais quoi having very set expectations of what we think we need to be happy, and who we need to be with, and what they need to say, and how they need to act right off the gate, because there’s so many options. My advice to everyone would be, actually, to sort of relax some of that and see if we can connect with people more authentically without necessarily leaping beyond the present moment into the future for what we have boxed ourself into thinking it is.
TS: OK, Lodro. As we come to a conclusion here of our conversation, this podcast is called Insights at the Edge. And one of the things I’m always curious about is the edge in someone’s life. And in this case, I’m really curious to know from translating your meditation experience into embodying kindness in every part of your life, what’s the hardest part of that for you? Where do you find yourself stumbling the most?
LR: Yes, that’s a great question. Of course, no surprise there je ne sais quoi I knew what I was getting into when I sat down with you, that you would be full of them.
I would say that one of the areas that I fall down a lot is probably right around my romantic life. Where I have the best-laid intentions, and then I come home at the end of a very long day and my mind isn’t immediately like, “Let me explore who you are today.”
TS: Yes.
LR: “You’re probably brand new. You’re not the same person I started dating years ago, let me explore what that means today.” It’s like, OK je ne sais quoi not that I would necessarily say I take my fiancée for granted, but there is some aspect here of, I can be completely delighted and curious about everyone in the world, and then I come home and I say, “Oh, gosh. I forgot to do that.” And here I am. I’m talking to you, and she’ll come home in a couple hours and it’ll be nine o’clock at night, and I will probably ask her about her day, and she’ll ask me about my day. But it won’t be the same as if I was on a first date with her, right? That level of curiosity. It really is a form of compassion. Just really saying, “Who are you today, this person I’m spending my life with?”
So, I’d say that’s one of those areas where I’m constantly considering how to be kinder, how to be better, in terms of manifesting these teachings in the moment.
TS: OK. And just to conclude, we talked about your overarching intention in your life to make meditation accessible to as many people as possible. Tell us a little bit about the vision behind MNDFL, this business of having mediation studios and an online component. But more than just what you’re doing with MNDFL, what you feel inside you of the vision of meditation catching on—what that would look like to you. Or even if you have a vision inside of that possibility.
LR: Yes. I’ll share that, and I’ll share my fears as well. MNDFL started as this idea of, “What if we just assembled, like, a dream team of teachers under one roof in a space that felt very warm, and cozy, and accessible for people so that . . .” I love my Buddhist centers in New York, but I also know some people that are like, “Oh, it’s six floors up,” or, “Oh, it was off-putting when I saw a shrine.” So something that felt very easy to get to, very je ne sais quoi it’s 30- and 45- minute classes so that people couldn’t even complain about, like, “Who’s got two hours to . . . ?” You know, like, we just try to lower as many bars as possible. Everyone’s first class is 10 dollars, everyone’s first month of unlimited classes is just 75 dollars. It’s by New York Standards relatively good.
And it was this overarching mission of, “There’s a million types of meditation out there. We should be able to make this open to people,” so that people could have a month or more of exploration and see, “Oh, I tried kundalini classes. I tried Buddhist classes. I tried Vedic teachers, I tried Jewish mindfulness instructors, and it turns out that what I really love is blah. And then I can go deep with it.”
So, in some sense, I mean, we are the gateway drug for meditation. We give people all of the options, and ideally they get hooked by one and then they might pursue that particular religious tradition if they want to do it, which is great. We’ve seen this be great feeders for Shambhala training levels, Insight Meditation Society retreats—all sorts of things. And I do believe this idea of a drop-in studio, something where you can just come for a morning class. And it’s going to follow probably the same route that yoga did a number of years ago.
When my business partner approached me and said, “Hey, you know, why doesn’t something like this exist?” I actually said, “I really do believe that they will be sprouting up and you will find them like coffee shops in your neighborhood, just one on every block.” And we’re still a number of years from that, but since we opened 18 months ago, we’ve seen probably 10 or 12 other studios open around the country, which is amazing. It’s really beautiful to see that so many people are inspired to do this, and I wish them all lots of luck.
So, I think that—to answer your question—this will get very, very big. That this will get to the point where meditation studios will be everywhere. We actually have a nonprofit arm ourselves called MNDFL Ed, where we’re bringing meditation into the school system. We actually, yesterday, had a group from a school come in and meditate with one of our teachers at the studio so that we could actually bring meditation to kids in a really accessible way. Again, the fun of making meditation accessible goes beyond just our nonprofit arm and putting MNDFL Video, which is all of our video collection. But we’ve also started saying, “OK. There are people who can’t come to class because everyone’s speaking English. What if we did a class in Spanish?” So we started monthly Spanish classes. We have a PoC group. We have all sorts of communities within our larger community at this point so that people really feel like they have a safe space to go to and learn these practices, which is very powerful for me to witness.
Now, here’s the fear: With meditation becoming so mainstream, I’m also seeing a number of people step up and say, “Oh, I did a weekend retreat with Tara Brach. I’m a meditation teacher now.” I’m sure if Tara Brach heard that, she’d be horrified. People not necessarily understanding the difference between, “I trained with so-and-so,” and, “So-and-so trained me to teach meditation.” I’m seeing a lot of that, and I’m even seeing that with people who are starting meditation businesses. They see an emerging market, they probably even have a deep love for meditation themselves, but they don’t always know the difference between a time-tested meditation technique that’s been around within the lineage and traditions for centuries, and something that someone made up last Thursday—which could be very helpful for a small number of people, but I would often recommend people study with teachers who have training within these longstanding techniques.
So that’s my fear in the midst of this, because I do think meditation is going to go the route of physical fitness—that back in the ‘50s, if someone said, “Hey, I’m going for a run.” Other people would say, “Who’s chasing you?”
It wasn’t the same awareness. And I think we’re hitting that point with meditation so that in the next 30, 40 years we will probably see this big boom where it becomes very acceptable. It will be in schools, it will be—you know, meditation studios will be everywhere, and we will actually start to have this be part of the mainstream society because the benefits are so wonderful and numerous.
TS: Thank you, Lodro. Thank you for sharing a bit about the vision that you see and what you’re up to. And thank you for being such a, dare I say, a Shambhala warrior in your own way. Thank you.
LR: Thank you, Tami. I appreciate you saying that. It’s a delight to be here, and to have this conversation with you.
TS: I’ve been talking with Lodro Rinzler. He is the author of six books, including the classic The Buddha Walks Into a Bar: A Guide to Life For a New Generation. Thanks, everyone, for being with us.
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